1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a technique for connecting a host computer constituting a server and SATA storage using a optical signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
As existing means for connecting storage devices, Parallel ATA (PATA) is widely used at the PC level, and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) is widely used at the server level. Also, in order to provide a high-bandwidth storage connection network between high-end servers, Fibre Channel (FC), which is high-speed network technology for connecting storage devices, has been introduced. FC has the advantages of high bandwidth, simple connection, and increased distance. However, because it is expensive and uses a complicated protocol, it is primarily used in environments that are less sensitive to cost, for example, data centers. Meanwhile, with the development in computer systems, internal and external I/O connections use high-speed serial signals rather than parallel signals (for example, PCI is substituted by PCI Express, COM ports and LPT ports are substituted by USB, and Front-Side Bus (FSB) is substituted by HyperTransport or QuickPath Interconnect (QPI)). Also, the storage connection methods PATA and SCSI have been developed into Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and SATA and SAS are now widely used in PCs and servers. Because SATA and SAS have a less complicated design and a high bandwidth, and may be implemented at low cost, they may be applied to high-performance computing environments such as data centers. However, due to the characteristics of electrical signals, the distance is limited. Consequently, a system using multiple storage devices is required to be adjacent to a computing node, and thus SATA and SAS may not replace FC.
Korean Patent No. 1444846 disclosed a technique in which, when a monitoring camera and a host device communicate with each other, mutual communication is performed using FCP (Fibre Channel Protocol) and a host bus adapter.
However, Korean Patent No. 1444846 disclosed only a technique for mutual communication using FCP, and did not disclose a technique for effectively connecting a host computer and SATA storage via FCP or for reducing the connection cost.
Consequently, as requirements for storage space for accommodating huge amounts of data increase, it is necessary to provide a technique for reducing connection costs when a host computer and SATA storage are connected.